


Post-Mortem

by Lavellington



Series: Home is so sad (221b drabbles) [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221 b drabbles, 221B Ficlet, Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:43:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavellington/pseuds/Lavellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I was a child, my teacher told my parents that I had an unhealthy fascination with dead things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-Mortem

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to aderyn for the second round of our game- shamefully late. I'm sure she'll forgive me. :) Based on The Bungler, by Amy Lowell, but ended up not having very much to do with that poem at all. Ah well. To read aderyn's beautiful fic based on the same poem, go here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/369274

When I was a child, my teacher told my parents that I had an unhealthy fascination with dead things. Now I understand that I am comfortable with death because death is static. The worst has already happened. There is knowledge to be gained from a dead thing, but no connection. We cannot hurt each other.

Sherlock Holmes knew that. He loved dead things the way I do, because he loved knowledge in its purest form- untainted by bias or humanity. He beat them purple with riding crops, like a painter attacking a blank canvas. He broke them up into their component parts- limbs and digits, that could belong to anyone, and therefore everyone. Sherlock Holmes could see thousands of years of evolution in a severed thumb. 

He looked me in the eye when he first met me, and broke me into parts- into all the little parts that make me myself. I’m not dead, I wanted to protest. The marks that you leave on me mean something.

I didn’t think anything could leave a mark on Sherlock. That was before. Before John, and before he looked at me and said, You were right- I’m not okay. 

I’ve seen now, what he looks like when he’s alive- _really_ alive, and when he’s sad. I’ve seen what he looks like when he’s broken.


End file.
